


One Chance At Love

by Persephone



Category: Valentine's Day (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, American Football, Bradley Cooper - Freeform, Canon Gay Character, Canon Gay Relationship, Eric Dane - Freeform, Los Angeles, M/M, Rare Characters, Rare Fandoms, Rare Pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-25
Updated: 2012-02-25
Packaged: 2017-10-31 17:10:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persephone/pseuds/Persephone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A rising football star, a fledging reporter. One chance to get it right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Chance At Love

**Author's Note:**

> A one-off for the **[Sean/Holden LJ community](http://sean-holden.livejournal.com/) **2012 Valentine’s Day Challenge: “First Valentine”****. AU from the ongoing series I’m writing. Hope you enjoy!

Each year on Valentine’s Day he got so much stuff that his publicist had to go through and find out what was most interesting. Whichever small-time sports publication had managed to send him the most innovative Valentine’s Day card, or sometimes whoever simply caught Kara’s fancy, would be the lucky winner to be granted a Valentine’s Day interview with Sean Jackson. Glare Publicity felt it made him stand out to sportswriters, humanizing him for all the world. And at twenty-six, and after just two years in the league, he _was_ being fast tracked into the hallowed mists of young and rising superstar quarterbacks, but still, he felt it was an asinine tradition. But hey, what did he know. 

So standing in the doorway to Kara’s messy office, he waited to see which diamond-in-the-rough sportswriter from Podunk Publications he was about to have an outstanding lunch with. _"What’s Sean Jackson Doing This Offseason? Read on to find out!”_ How about, “he’s looking forward to not having to entertain reporters.”

“And this year’s lucky winner is…” She turned over the red Valentine’s Day card she was holding in her hand and looked at the name. “Holden Wilson.”

He waited. 

Nope. It wasn’t coming to him. 

“Which one is he again?”

“Halftime Report,” she said, reading from the card. Then she paused, staring at it. “It’s a website. A startup.” She didn’t sound too thrilled. “We can pass on this one if you want.”

“No way,” he replied, moving from the door. “It’s your tradition. We’re honoring it.”

* * *

He tries to maintain an air of coolness and disregard for the devastated feelings tumbling inside him. But he doesn’t have that kind of sophistication.

He could play it one way, or another, or even a third, but from the moment Sean walked into the restaurant and shook his hand, saying a boilerplate, “Hey, man, how’s it going,” it’s been perfectly clear that Sean doesn’t remember him.

But… He’s been trying not to think back to their previous interviews—one over drinks and as a quick favor from a friend when he had been freelance, and the other a question at a press conference—and to the connection he thought they had made, how Sean had looked into his eyes when he had bought him a beer. They had talked over nachos and it had seemed so real…

Now, it’s just a blank stare from sky eyes, and a faint air of wishing to be somewhere else. He asks his questions which he doesn't care a scrap about now, and tries to keep his focus. He could have sworn, he could almost have sworn—

He manages to maintain an interest in his own interview by flipping his notebook repetitively, but it’s obvious that Sean doesn’t have an interest, and he doesn’t have an interest, and he can’t keep this up. He tries not to lean in and stare in response to the non-responses, or to the wrong things, and because of that he soon can’t remember why he’s there or why he can’t figure out whether Sean is really gay and in the closet like they say in the press pools, or whether he’s simply losing his mind.

But he’s aware soon enough that he’s coming off as too familiar, and too star struck, when he calls Sean by his first name once too often and much too comfortably, and Sean gives him another irritated look. 

He fumbles his notebook and his pen, and shoves mistakenly at the table and makes it rock their waters out of the stemmed glasses. He rights it all and does not look at Sean. 

After fifty minutes the interview concludes. He thinks Sean has shown more patience that he would have expected. Much too needliy he asks if he can schedule another time for them to meet. At some point. Through his publicist. Now that they had a— rapport going.

“Yeah, no problem,” Sean replies, already putting down his napkin, already mentally departed. There is no rapport, and it’s clear that the next time Sean won’t remember him either.

Yeah, just too many interviews. Too many reporters to keep straight. Famous people were busy people, crammed timewise with important things to get done. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he mutters, mostly to himself.

“Yeah, you too.” Then Sean pauses, and asks, “Got anything good cookin’?”

He’s no longer interested in being a moron. The question is asked not out of interest but politeness: Sean is picking up his valet ticket and pocketing his phone; in a second he will leave. Still, he thinks of Jonny and the dog, and of all the things he will have to sit through before he can sit by himself and rewatch all the clips from last week’s Chargers game on the site’s archives.

“Not really,” he says in an undertone. “I just have dinner with my boyfriend—” He looks up. “I—I have a boyfriend—” 

It gets him a smirk. “Doesn’t everyone in L.A.?” 

—and he laughs, too loudly, too excitedly, at the joke Sean obviously means as a throwaway. 

Sean gives him another even more irritated look and he stops, mutters nonsense, and lowers his head. He tries to remember on what small talk he’s been making a fool of himself and finishes, “An-and after that I’m not doing anything.” And then he stops again, realizing what he has just said. 

He looks up, and Sean’s expression has taken on an air of affliction. Another fan, another safe-to-say-it _mancrush,_ and he verbally stumbles, spends the remaining seconds allotted to him backtracking to explain that he and Jonny not doing anything after dinner didn’t mean that Jonny wasn’t a good boyfriend, because he was. Jonny just had a lot on his plate on this particular Valentine’s Day and that he really couldn’t be there as much as— as much as he knew that Jonny would like.

Striving, as he sinks, to clear up the mistaken impression he's given a straight celebrity quarterback that he wants him—is dying inside for him—to ask him out on Valentine’s Day because his boyfriend doesn’t understand him the way he does. Doesn’t have the connection with him that he feels every time he watches him being interviewed on ESPN and hears the soul-touching things he says, as if he’s speaking only to him, urging him to decipher with his secret love a secret language that only they could understand. 

The understanding that they were meant for each other.

“We done here?”

Sean has had enough. He’s glancing at his watch, without making it look that way.

“Y-yeah.”

Sean begins to stand and so does he, then Sean looks down at him, which is odd seeing as they stand almost at the same height. “What is the deal with your boyfriend anyway?” Sean suddenly asks, insolently. “He sounds like a—” Sean stops, doesn’t conclude his sentence, and instead looks disgusted. 

He finds that odder still. Sean had never met Jonny and yet he seems to know him. Sean shrugs, goes back to looking disinterested. “You shouldn’t let people push you around,” Sean says, another throwaway statement, as he pushes back his chair.

“H-he’s a good guy,” he responds, not knowing why he’s telling a perfect stranger his business. Sean throws up a hand, acknowledgment and goodbye, and turns toward the restaurant’s exit. 

“It was nice meeting you— Uh…”

“Holden.” 

“ _Holden._ Holden.”

And then he’s outside, sitting at the back of the restaurant, waiting for the valet to bring around his car. It’s Thursday night and even so the service is backed up. He takes the delay to seek out a recess along the ivy-covered walls and play back his recording of the interview. He notes, as he listens, that he will have to erase the parts about Jonny, the part where he freaks Sean out.

Maybe next time the interview will go better. If, after this flicker of luck in landing a one-on-one with Sean Jackson, and then turning in this pathetic offering of his interview skills, he still has a job. If, after this, he still has access to top football players, and if Sean Jackson remembers him. 

But he thought they had really hit it off this time. Last time it had been too crowed at the sports bar and Sean had possibly had other meetings with sportswriters after him, and his memories had been clouded. This time, Sean had even gone so far as repeating his name, and in that way that meant you didn’t want to forget.

As for the article… He sighs as the audio crackles for the umpteenth deadtime. He will just have to do the best he can with what he has.

But at some point he will have to do better than just scraping by. He will have to turn in a piece that will have some exclusivity to it and get him some attention. Otherwise the seven months he has spent assuring himself that leaving New York because Jonny had gotten a great opportunity in L.A. was not a very bad idea, like his friends insisted it was, would all have been for naught. He will have to start assuring himself a little louder.

Yeah, so maybe better luck, less focus on idealistic romances next time.

“So what _exactly_ is his fucking deal?”

Startled, he stumbles to his feet. Sean is entering the shadowy alcove, haunted by the afternoon shadows and him. The shrubs frame him as he slowly advances. Then he stands, rustling ivy accompanying his fierce stance, as he waits for his answer.

The sight makes him blurt, “He-he doesn’t want a family and-and kids and I do.” He has never understood why he can’t stop himself from engaging in a need for conversation. It’s the thing about him Jonny hates the most.

“H-he doesn’t want any responsibilities beyond having a dog.”

“Then he’s a fucking idiot.” Sean has reached him, is reaching for him. “I wouldn’t deny you a fucking thing,” he growls, and then is fusing his mouth to his, swallowing his shuddered gasp. He's pushing him against the wall.

His only thought is that he’s falling. Slipping and about to slam his head against the concrete pavement and so he clutches Sean. But no such thing happens. 

He’s not falling. The world tilts… then rights itself… and it’s the feel of Sean’s mouth doing it to him. He feels dizzy… clutches tighter, whimpers as he slips his tongue in and out of Sean’s mouth. 

None of it could be happening. Not in a public place, not to him. And not, in his sweetest dreams, with Sean. 

Sean has broken the kiss, but it takes him precious moments to realize it. Sean looks down at him, breathing heavily. There is confusion and frustration in his eyes. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Wh…what…?”

“ _Can_ you keep a secret?”

“You-you remember me.”

“Of course I remember you.”

“I—I thought—”

“I want to take you home.”

He opens his eyes, stares. The eyes staring back at him are burning.

“But I can only promise you today.”

It must all be a dream. Then everything would make sense: his unhesitating revelations about Jonny, his present circumstances.

“Don’t make me beg you.”

It's a whisper, accompanied by an infinitesimal push on his arm, and its desperation is staggering.

Words are failing him, his thoughts gone. “I—I—”

“ _Please. Please_ don’t do this to me again.”

He’s on his knees, shaking as he packs up his fallen recorder, closes up his bag. Sean watches him, his unmistakable arousal searing his peripheral vision, the intense force with which he waits on the field before releasing a guided missile beating in waves off him. Quickly, they depart the place.

It will be a hotel— or more likely a—a motel in West Hollywood—yes, he can say it, as he thinks Sean would never take him to his place and he doesn't have a place of his own. He stumbles after Sean into his car, leaving his own at the valet.

He calls him _Sean_ but the truth is that he doesn’t know him at all. Not any more than anyone who thinks they know a celebrity from watching them on TV. He had left New York to be with his partner and to follow him into whatever stage life next planned for them.

But he was about to throw it all away for one chance at love.


End file.
